


you make (my) darkness bright

by a_stankova



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Domestic Bliss, Established Relationship, F/F, For a while anyway, Hurt/Comfort, Murder, On the Run, Panic Attacks, Shower Sex, Smut, dark!eve, post 3x08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:09:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24528922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_stankova/pseuds/a_stankova
Summary: At once, Villanelle’s laughter dies away, her tone shifting to one of grave concern. “Eve?”“Baby,” Eve chokes out into the phone, feeling the first press of tears behind her eyes. “I need your help.”ORThe One After the Bridge.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 15
Kudos: 342





	you make (my) darkness bright

**Author's Note:**

> Imagine if season four actually went this way, haha, jk ... unless?  
> (also, TW for a panic attack, just in case!)

Intelligence officers are trained to be keenly observant, to spot the signs that civilians miss. But it wouldn’t take a MI6 agent to realise that, even now, Eve is continuing to piss off her employers.

‘After the Bridge’ is the title of the chapter in this, Eve’s new life, which is proving relatively similar to the old one in many aspects; she still gets up at 7:30am every morning, still skips breakfast and still goes to the supermarket once a week. The one key difference, however, is perhaps the best thing about this, Eve’s new life – where the stark nakedness of her ring finger had been a noticeable change at first, it hadn’t weighed upon her, for the side of the bed that had been vacant for so long has now been filled by soft blonde locks, strong lines and gentle curves.

After Rome, she’d been alone – people had looked at her in the supermarket when she’d bought wine by the basket-full, wine she’d consumed in silence while she sat in the dark of her dingy little apartment, numbed by the sound of the clock ticking, filling every waking second.

But this, After the Bridge – this is better. This time, she has Villanelle.

People don’t quite stare at her anymore, and when they do, it’s to smile. She thinks she might look happy to them.

That first week had been busy; they’d taken the train back to Scotland, up past Aberdeen to Inverness. Villanelle hadn’t much liked the weather up north, but it was quiet enough, and they’d desperately needed quiet. Eve hadn’t argued – had already made up her mind that she’d follow Villanelle anywhere, so long as she never had to see her walk away again. They’d rented a flat outside the city centre, spent long hours decorating, furnishing, arranging and then re-arranging, hopping between colour schemes until finally their little flat felt cosy enough to sleep in. Eve hadn’t particularly missed cohabiting, but she finds that living with Villanelle is not stifling – they had made decisions together, down to the tiny details like the candles and the bath towels and the lampshades. The second bedroom had gone quietly unnoticed, and by the end of that first week, Villanelle had become a permanent fixture in her bed, as adept at a sleepy smile as she is a wicked, sinful grin.

Cabin fever had set in by day nine, and they’d finally pried themselves out of bed to take a wander around the neighbourhood. It’s nowhere near as vibrant or lively as Ealing, Eve thinks – Villanelle says she misses the heat of Barcelona, more than once – but there is an unmistakable charm about the place which Eve, at least, takes comfort in. They have slipped into the local community as only they can given the circumstances – barely, and quietly. They’d left everything behind in London without so much as a backwards glance, but they know that the threat remains, lingering just around the corner at any given moment. 

Eve can ignore that, though. It’s actually easy to, when Villanelle’s smile is that damn bright.

Afternoons had grown tedious by day ten, so Eve had started attending a yoga class at 3pm every Tuesday and Thursday – a tactical decision made so as both to avoid mothers on the school-run and be finished before the nine-to-fivers show up. Villanelle cannot fathom the idea of having an instructor, so does pilates in their living room instead, while Fleetwood Mac vinyls play in the background. Eve watches her sometimes over the rim of her coffee mug, head tilted in appreciation when her body curls or elongates. She truly is the most beautiful woman Eve has ever seen, and she doesn’t mind that Villanelle knows that.

The next few weeks had seen them establish a plain routine of sleeping, eating and having sex, wherein hours had started blurring together. On day fifteen, they’d spent hours in the kitchen, cooking from a Nigella Lawson cookbook, but mostly making a mess of the countertops and each other’s faces; on day seventeen, she’d went in search of a change, had ended up in a salon and gotten them to frame her forehead with bangs. Villanelle had been so thrilled she’d almost cried, and Eve’s whole body had ached delightfully for days afterwards. It had become very apparent to Eve then that Villanelle is extremely unfocused when they’re not together – on day twenty, she’d come home from the supermarket to find Villanelle had moved every piece of furniture around, twice. Eve had seen it for the cry for help that it was, and promptly handed Villanelle her phone.

“We need jobs,” she’d told her, softening this blow with a kiss to her forehead. “Before our money runs out, and before you kill someone.”

By day twenty-three, Eve had taken work at the first café that would hire her, and within twenty-four hours Villanelle had found a paid apprenticeship in a local carpentry shop. The smile she’d worn to dinner that night had shone through her teeth, lightening Eve’s heart.

“I love woodwork,” she’d mumbled happily around her pasta. “I was the best at it in prison.”

Eve had been relieved. At least this is something she is looking forward to – she’d been terrified to imagine Villanelle behind a Tesco check-out, or taking customer complaints on a desk job. 

Eve works a Monday, Wednesday and Friday, does yoga and boxing and cooking to pass the time while Villanelle is working, but the nights, the nights are her favourite; when Villanelle kisses her in the dark, draws patterns down her body and drags new, guttural sounds from her, when her body coils and cracks and re-knits, shaking with laughter in the delirium as Villanelle brings her down with whispers of love against her neck.

This is better, Eve thinks, every night as Villanelle curls up behind her, nose tucked lovingly against the fading red site of her bullet wound. After everything they’d been through, they deserved this – deserved each other. They’d fought hard enough.

It is day thirty-seven now. Eve hasn’t worked a customer service job since college, so stepping back into a waitressing role has been an adjustment. Urban Beans Coffee presents a very different challenge than MI6, and one not nearly as eclipsing. It’s on the corner of Crown Avenue, ten minutes from Eastgate shopping centre in one direction and Crown Primary school in the other. She’s only been here two weeks, and while it’s not rewarding in the slightest, it gives her purpose.

It’s just her bad luck, really, that this is her second consecutive late-coming.

Her boss, Dickhead Dave (a name Villanelle had so accurately coined), isn’t unkind, per se – he had, after all, taken Eve on quite readily, no questions asked. When he rubs his gruff cheeks with his thick, dry fingers, he almost reminds her of Konstantin, though his accent is distinctively Scottish, and his glare is more beady and condescending than it is secretive and warning.

He is, however, unhappy with her, suggests plainly that she try and be at least ten minutes early for every shift.

(MI6 would never. She almost misses it.)

“It won’t happen again,” Eve says, picking up her pad and pen from the counter, apron already tied around her waist.

“Be sure that it doesn’t,” Dickhead Dave says, through a huff he doesn’t bother to conceal as he hands over her name badge.

Eve’s jaw twitches, her grip on her pad and pen tightening. She wants nothing more in this moment than to backhand him – if she still had her wedding ring, she could’ve taken a considerable chunk out of his cheek. She imagines the scene in her head, imagines the shocked gasp of patrons as he collapses to the floor, whimpering in pain as blood runs hot and fast over the hand he would press to his stupid face.

But as it stands, her divorce is pending, and her finger is bare. Besides, while the job may suck, it is money that she’ll need eventually, and more than that, it gives her a purpose. So she clears her throat quietly and steels her chest hard enough to make her eyes water, careful to catch his attention at the exact moment she hiccups. 

“I had a bad night,” she whimpers softly, fidgeting deliberately with her apron. “Nightmares, and no central heating, then I got my period–”

His disposition shifts almost immediately, comically, and he’s brushing her off with a weak smile and a wide hand before she can even thank him for his understanding.

As soon as she’s blinked the blurring from her eyes, she goes to find Erin, the Saturday girl that had been hired three years ago and now averages more than thirty hours a week. Erin is in her mid-twenties, so is full of that bright, infectious energy which makes her a hit with the public; she has a smile for everyone, goes out of her way to please and doesn’t slack. She is perhaps the antithesis of Villanelle, entrancing for the _right_ reasons.

Eve does not see the attraction – truly, she might be ruined for anyone else, eternally.

Eve finds Anti-Villanelle by the condiments, balancing a stack of half-full plates in one palm and a mug of steaming hot liquid in the other. Her eyes deceive how stressed she is, but still, that smile.

“Any customers needing seen to right now?” Eve asks her.

“God, yes, the window table in the front please!” Her conversational laugh is high in pitch and childishly sweet, and that’s exactly why Eve can’t stand it. It reminds her of Villanelle, reminds her that only she could pull off such an obnoxious sound, reminds her that it will be hours before she sees her again.

(She needs to stop comparing. She knows.)

Sandwich and tea for the woman in corporate attire who comes perfunctorily between three and five in the afternoon; strawberry shortcake for the frazzled looking teenager whose face creases up at the turning of every page in his calculus textbook; crescent moon cookies for the kids who come in from the high school at lunch time.

And then it’s strong black coffee for the three middle-aged women who sit by the window in the corner, exchanging wedding pictures and ultrasounds and praises promising a positively wonderful career in motherhood.

Eve has flickering thoughts then, about Niko and how they’d never had kids, and she reminds herself it’s just as well. What the Hell would she have done in _that_ scenario? If Villanelle had come along and Eve had had children, would Eve have entertained it all the same way? Would Villanelle even have bothered pursuing her, if she’d been a mother?

As if on cue, her shoulder, practically fully healed now, twinges a little, reminding her that this is ‘After the Bridge’, Eve, _after_. Things are different now – better. She’d accepted that Villanelle is and will always be a part of her life, and where that thought had once terrified Eve, she’d be remiss if she didn’t acknowledge that _she_ is different now, too. Perhaps the old Eve wouldn’t have gone so readily with Villanelle, but who she is now? There had been no other fate she would’ve accepted for them.

While wandering somewhat absent-mindedly around the shop floor, allowing the positive energy of others to sink into her skin, Eve’s thoughts turn to London, and the disasters they’d fled from. What had happened to Carolyn, after she’d killed Paul? Had she stopped grieving Kenny’s death, now that she had her answers? Had Konstantin run off with the money, or had his betrayals caught up with him? Had the Bitter Pill offices and MI6 moved on from the Twelve completely, seeking out new challenges?

Eve had considered all of these options, had spent long hours thinking on them and what they would mean for her and Villanelle. She’d become fixated with the creases in her bedsheets, the dust on the bedside cabinet, had stared and wondered and gotten lost inside her own head until finally, she’d awoken on day five and resolved to get her shit together.

But her mind is always in hyperdrive, always alert, always churning thoughts that make her cold with paranoia and fear. She questions everything, analyses everyone. How can she be sure of who anyone really is?

Like this man, for example, just out of view through the window, heading for the entrance to this, her safe, quiet little place of work.

Before the bell sounds above the door as it opens, Eve’s body senses threat. Her forehead gets tight and her neck starts to sweat, leaving her uncomfortably hot and nauseous, the way you feel when you haven’t slept all night and decide to go running the next morning to wake yourself up. Energy slides from him, this tall man in a suit, slips off his shoulders and pools around his feet like a puddle, inching closer and closer into her personal space. Eve doesn’t realise that her heart is pounding or that her ears are ringing until he’s looking at her.

His eyes are jarring, for they are colourless. As present and as absent as air.

“Please,” he mumbles, his voice thick with the isles of Scotland. He removes his gloves slowly – carefully, the way killers do in movies, the way she imagines Villanelle would – and drops himself down into the lone seat of the table Eve had been wiping down. “Cream and sugar.”

None of what he’s saying makes any sense to her. “I’m sorry?”

Then, Suit Man looks at her again, studies her as if he can read her entire life story through her eyes, and repeats: “Cream and sugar, for the coffee. Please.”

Coffee with cream and sugar. Eve’s hands start to sweat and her heart hammers its way up into her throat. “Sure,” she says quietly, afraid her voice is going to crack. “Won’t be a minute.”

“Thank you, Eve,” Suit Man smiles, his eyes flashing.

Her discomfort only worsens when he uses her name, and she has to remind herself she’s wearing a name badge. She turns and heads back towards the counter, grabbing the coffee jug in her unsteady hands, sending the liquid sloshing up and down the sides. She keeps her eyes down, because she knows she’ll only stare if she were to look up.

As she pours she catches him folding his hands in his lap.

As she grabs the sugar packets she sees him unfold them to reach into a pocket.

As she reaches for the creamer she notices him looking at her, and she lowers her gaze again.

_Can’t breathe. No air. Gonna die._

_Gonna spill coffee everywhere._

“Hey, Erin?” Eve croaks, throat so dry the words stick in her windpipe. “Could you take this to table seventeen?”

Erin looks at her with a frown, face framed by ringlets of dark hair which have fallen loose from her bun. “You feeling okay?” She asks, eyebrow narrowed as she takes the mug from Eve’s hand.

“Yeah, yeah, I, uh—well, no, actually. I’m feeling kinda sick so I was gonna step out for a moment, get some air. If that’s alright?”

“Of course!” She exclaims, shaking her head. She motions to the back room with her hand. “Away! It’s nice and cool in back. Don’t come back out here until you feel a bit better, ‘kay?” 

“Thanks,” Eve breathes quietly, placing a hand over her stomach and not entirely faking it as she stumbles to the back room, where she can ride out her panic attack in peace.

_In, out, in, out, over and over._

_You’re okay._

_You’re safe._

_You’re okay._

But what if she’s _not_ okay? What if he’s with MI6, or the Twelve? What if the Twelve are here? What if they’ve finally come to kill her for what she did to Raymond?

_They’ll take you apart for this. Inch by inch._

That’s what he’d said. What if this is it? What if they’d been looking for her, ever since Rome, and they’d finally found her? What if they killed her right here, left her bleeding next to the coffee beans and the milk fridge?

What if they suffocated her with a bin liner?

What if they hanged her from the ceiling light, until her eyes were nothing but shells with the eggs scooped out?

Oh God, what if they’d already found Villanelle?

What if Villanelle was – 

She clutches her hair in her fists, closes her eyes and fights for control of her breath, grapples for it though it slips through her fingers like sand.

_Focus,_ she thinks, as harshly as she can. _Focus._

She reaches inside her pocket, hands still shaking as she unlocks her phone, frantically pulling up Villanelle’s number, needing to hear her voice more in this moment than she thinks she ever has. But before she can dial, a voice is clearing ten feet away from her.

“Eve Polastri.”

Her head snaps up. Her stomach sinks.

Suit Man smiles politely – how the fuck had he even managed to follow her out here?

“Who are you?” she chokes out, lifting off the wall and taking a step backwards down the alley, like that will save her.

He cocks his head to the side, squints at her. He almost looks disappointed that she’d ask such a question, and she supposes he’d have every right.

It is, after all, pretty fucking obvious who he is – or, at least, who he represents.

“How did you find me?” she whispers instead, because that’s really the question she wants the answer to, if she’s being honest.

“We’ll always find you,” he answers simply, his polite smile slipping into something far more sinister as he undoes the button on his suit-jacket, giving him more room to move as he takes a step towards her. “You would be very foolish to think you could continue outrunning us. As would our dear Oksana.”

Eve stops moving. Her face shifts. 

He notices. He runs with it.

“How has domestic life been?” he grins. “I’m sure the sex has made this whole endeavour worthwhile.”

“It’s pretty fucking good,” Eve snaps, her blood boiling in her ears as the walls close in. “So why don’t you leave us alone? We’re nothing to you now.”

“I’d love to,” he laments, quite disingenuously. “But I have my orders. Hélène was very clear. No loose ends.”

_Hélène._ Villanelle’s ex-boss, Eve remembers.

“Don’t worry, though, Eve,” he spits, his face turning sour as he rolls his sleeves up menacingly, taking slow steps in her direction. “Oksana will be next.”

She feels her neck twitch angrily at that – feels something shift inside her. Cautiously, her hand snakes into her pocket, fingers curling around the fountain pen she’d been using to take customer orders not half an hour ago.

“I can’t let you do that,” she warns him, voice low. “This is your one chance. I suggest you take it and run.”

She finds, with shocking clarity, that she means it. More than that, she’s unafraid of it – she knows undoubtedly that she’d do anything to protect Villanelle, to protect both of them. 

But he laughs at her. Underestimates her. She wonders if he knows about Raymond.

It snaps something inside of her. So when he lunges, with nothing but his bare hands, she’s ready.

Eve sees red, and then crimson, as she thrusts the fountain pen directly into his eye with a quick jerk of her arm. He howls in pain as shock engulfs him, his knees crashing to the cobblestone ground. His hands flail, grip onto her legs, but his grip is weakening, and she barely feels it. Her whole body thrums, angry and alive as she jerks her hand harder, driving the pen deeper, and deeper again because _shit_ she can’t stop now, not when he’s still breathing and when he’s threatening Villanelle and when –

He twitches. Stills. Slumps. When she lets go of the pen, he falls, face first into the cobblestone. Blood pools under his face, seeping into the cracks in the ground. It’s not like Raymond, or even like Dasha, but it strikes something deep inside of Eve – something primal.

A monster, encouraged.

Her phone, lying cracked on the ground, is thankfully still working. She grabs it, forces her trembling fingers to dial the number she’d been trying to, before Suit Man had ambushed her.

After three rings, the call connects. “Hello,” Villanelle chirps happily. “I was just about to call you! Did you read my mind? That’s very romantic.”

Eve breathes down the phone, nausea pooling in her stomach. At once, Villanelle’s laughter dies away, her tone shifting to one of grave concern. “Eve?”

“Baby,” Eve chokes out into the phone, feeling the first press of tears behind her eyes. “I need your help.”

––––––––––––––––––––

Villanelle calls Konstantin, which infuriates Eve briefly. More than once she’s had dark thoughts of tracking him down in the dead of night, finishing what Carolyn had started that day, for what he’d done to Kenny. Poor, sweet, young Kenny, who hadn’t deserved to die, who had been the only friend Eve had really had left. Konstantin had taken that from her. Sometimes she’ll think on how he’d hurt Villanelle, too, how he’d betrayed her, and lied to her, and the urge to put a bullet in his head expands tenfold in her chest.

In spite of this, and in spite of how he’d treated her, Villanelle calls him anyway. Villanelle had sworn she was done with him, would never seek him out again, but she does it in an instant, for Eve, and for them. It infuriates Eve, but she understands – he’s the only one they know who can clean up her mess. 

Eve keeps a watchful eye on the back door, mindful that Erin or Dickhead Dave could find her at any moment. Luckily for her, and not ten minutes since Villanelle had hung up the phone, a car becomes visible at the end of the alley, its headlights flashing, signalling to her that help has arrived.

Eve steels herself for the sight of Konstantin, ready for that familiar ugly hatred to consume her and drive her to commit her second kill of the day.

It never comes, and in hindsight, it makes sense that it wouldn’t actually be him. He’s bound to have disappeared somewhere across the globe, never to be seen by any of them again.

This man is young, clean-shaven, with a full head of brown hair and piercing blue eyes.

“Hello, Eve,” he greets her with a smile. His accent is distinctively Russian. His eyes flicker to the body on the ground, and his smile grows wider. “What a terrible fall he seems to have had.”

A dry laugh crawls its way out of Eve’s throat. “A shame, really.”

“Indeed.”

He’s…likeable, which Eve hadn’t anticipated. It makes her slightly more wary of him.

“What’s your name?”

“Lychek,” he tells her, chuckling a little as he motions between her and the body he’s currently handling. “I would shake your hand, but blood, y’know?”

Her hands are not overly bloody, though. It’s not like when she stabbed Villanelle. “Oh, yeah, right.”

Wordlessly, he hands her a packet of wipes, lemon-scented. She scrubs meticulously, all over and under her fingernails. She does not stop until her skin stings, and when she’s done, she throws the whole packet in the dumpster.

“Do not worry, Eve,” Lychek assures her then, nodding behind her to the back door. “Go back inside. Go home. I will take care of this.”

She nods – it’s all she can do. Her mind fills with images of Villanelle, and her chest constricts. She wants nothing more than to be home with her.

As she’s turning to head back inside, already formulating an excuse to leave that doesn’t involve murder, she hears Lychek calling to her:

“Oh, Eve, do you need your pen back?”

She gapes when she realises he’s being serious. “That’s– _no_ , Lychek.” And then, after a beat: “Thanks.”

He nods amiably, slipping the pen into his pocket, continuing to divest the body of its artefacts – wallet, keys, a postcard not unlike the ones Villanelle had told Eve about. Eve does not stay to watch Lychek drag the body down the alley to his car, but she does not breathe again until she’s sure she’s heard the slam of a door and the sound of an engine starting up.

She waits deliberately for Erin to pass by before she vomits on the floor, as dramatically as she can manage to. She makes a show of crying for the girl’s benefit as she fusses worriedly over her, ushering her to Dickhead Dave who takes one look at her and tells her to take a few days off.

“Keep in touch,” he says, only slightly moody. “Let me know when you’re back to normal.”

She stifles the urge to laugh in his face at that. _If he only fucking knew._

With a short farewell to Erin and acceptance of her well wishes, Eve leaves, knowing that her stint as a waitress there is probably over now.

She doesn’t look back.

––––––––––––––––––––

_I’ll be home soon x_

Villanelle had sent the text almost twenty minutes ago – has apparently made an excuse at the wood shop to sneak away early. Eve thinks the whole way home that she’ll wait for her, will meet her at the front door with a never-ending embrace, maybe cry against her until her anxiety has quelled. She finds, however, that she cannot wait, and no sooner has she arrived at the flat than she is tugging off her clothes, leaving a trail along the floor as she heads for the bathroom, desperate to wash away the day.

The water is warm, and the pressure is good. Villanelle had said from day one that it’s one of the nicest showers she’s ever had, and Eve agrees. If she closes her eyes, the crash of the water is almost enough to cancel out the thrum of blood that persists still in her ears.

She faces into the spray, water dripping from her eyelashes as she stares at her hands. They still sting, lemon-scented. They look different, she thinks. Perhaps it’s what they’ve done, where they’ve been. Their power is unquantified, unknown even by Eve herself. The only time she is sure of their capabilities are when they are on Villanelle, and even then, she seems to find new ways of discovering her, every day.

The sound of the water running puts her in mind of that night on the bridge, when the river had run below them, dark and rippling in the wind. Everything had been dark that night, except for Villanelle – she’d been a bright orange beacon of fucking hope, smiling at Eve from ten feet away, motioning for her to follow.

Eve hadn’t hesitated. Doesn’t think she ever will again.

She hears the sound of the front door, opening and closing somewhere far away, and when strong arms encircle her waist from behind moments later, she sinks into them, relieved.

“Are you okay?” Villanelle murmurs worriedly against her neck, pressing soft kisses to her wet skin as her body presses flush to Eve’s back.

Eve’s eyes flutter closed, and she slides her hands over Villanelle’s arms, holding her in place as the water beats down on them. “I’m fine,” she promises her. “I handled it.”

Villanelle hums – Eve wonders if she is impressed, or nervous. She supposes it could be both. 

Still, she doesn’t stop kissing the slope of Eve’s neck, down to her shoulder. “You sounded scared,” she points out, non-accusingly. “On the phone.”

“I was,” Eve admits with a sigh, craning her neck to entice Villanelle’s continued exploration. 

“What happened?”

Eve sighs out every ounce of air in her lungs, and turns in Villanelle’s arms. She’s always turning around for her, she finds. When confronted with the sight of her, Eve is momentarily struck – her make-up is washing away and her blonde hair is darker when it’s wet, but her eyes are bright with a million things that Eve can’t name, and her skin is otherworldly.

Eve cups her neck, runs gentle thumbs along her jawline and presses them to a point under her chin, keeping her head tilted up just enough that Eve can look into her eyes.

“He was a customer,” she begins softly, letting the memories play back in her head like a movie. “Ordered a coffee. He looked…something didn’t feel right. I don’t know what it was.”

Villanelle’s arms tighten around her then, but she remains silent, listening.

Eve continues. “He followed me outside. He threatened you.” She laughs a little then, letting her arms wrap around Villanelle’s shoulders, the phantom memory of her anger sparking in her mouth and in her fingertips.“And I just fucking _snapped_.”

Villanelle’s breath hitches in the space between them. Her eyes, bright and inviting, turn dark under the shower spray.

“What did you do?”

It’s said somewhat breathlessly, like perhaps this has moved beyond gentle concern, into something far more curious, and masochistic.

Eve supposes that’s kind of their brand.

“I told him to back off.”

Her back meets the wall, and suddenly Villanelle’s hands are moving, and her head is dipping. “Did he?”

“No,” Eve gasps out as Villanelle’s tongue scours over her nipple then, unexpectedly but not unwelcomely. She reaches for her head, tangles her fingers in wet locks. “Baby, I–”

“How did you kill him?” Villanelle whispers against her breast, her thumb reaching down to stroke over Eve’s clit, making her mewl out loud over the sound of the shower.

“Through the eye,” Eve moans, head falling back against the shower wall, leg hitching around Villanelle’s hip as fingers slip inside her suddenly, curling up rough and without mercy. “With a fountain pen.”

Villanelle kisses her then, hard and uncoordinated as her fingers continue to thrust inside of Eve, driving her to breathless pants and watery gasps as she gives chase with her hips.

“What did he do?” Villanelle growls, tongue lathing down Eve’s neck, her free hand clinging to Eve’s thigh around her waist. “Tell me, please.”

And _fuck_ if Eve could ever refuse her. “He fell,” she whines, eyes screwing shut as a string pulls tight inside her, as Villanelle’s fingers move faster. “He screamed like a fucking baby and his body twitched and–fuck, Oksana, _please_ –”

“How long before he died, Eve? How long before you killed him?”

“A minute!” Eve cries out, teeth dropping to sink into the wet flesh of Villanelle’s shoulder. “Less than a minute, even–fuck, Oksana, I’m–!”

The rest of her sentence is lost in the water as her body ascends, twitching and stilling not unlike how Suit Man’s had. But the body against her is warm, guides her back to Earth gently – might _send_ her to the edge of death, but pulls her back every time.

She’s yet to let her down that way.

When the world has re-knitted, Eve’s eyes find Villanelle’s under the shower spray. They are still dark, probably dark as her own, and she realises that this, what had just happened between them, might be more harrowing than the kill itself.

It’s hard to question it though, when Villanelle is kissing her like she’s everything she ever wanted.

It’s impossible for Eve to kiss back like she doesn’t feel the same.

–––––––––––––––––––

Villanelle had brought lunch on her way home from the wood shop, Eve discovers – take-out from their favourite Chinese restaurant, with a bottle of red wine that Eve had been keen to crack since the week had begun. She’d always been attentive towards Eve, even Before Rome – had always given perfect gifts, carefully selected with Eve in mind. But these gestures are more profound, now that Villanelle really knows her. She knows these things not only because she pays attention, but because she listens, and wants to make Eve feel good. 

It’s refreshing, and touching. Niko had long stopped doing such things for her.

They eat in bed — something Villanelle hates to do — and they don’t talk, just trade soft kisses between loaded chopsticks, gentle reminders that they’re both real, and they’re both okay. But for Eve, the walls have never been closer. Suit Man had been right — she’d been foolish to think this quiet little life of theirs could last.

Some time later, in the dark, Eve speaks, her voice a soft whisper against Villanelle’s chest:

“Do you miss it?” 

“Miss what?” Villanelle murmurs, hand smoothing over Eve’s spine, up and down, like a mantra. 

“Killing people.”

Her hand stills for a long moment, resuming on a short sigh. “I don’t know.”

“I think you might, deep down.”

“Maybe I just have a kink for hearing you talk about it,” Villanelle chuckles, but it’s forced, and even though Eve can’t see her face from this angle, she knows if she were to look, she’d see her struggle shining out of her eyes. 

But Eve won’t push her. Smiles into Villanelle’s chest. “Maybe.”

There is a few long moments of silence after that, in which Eve follows the sounds of Villanelle’s heartbeat, closes her eyes to the feel of fingers in her curls, stroking softly along her scalp, twirling at the ends. In silence, her mind wanders. Something stirs inside her — starts to tick over, silently working on thoughts of the Twelve, of MI6, of Suit Man and what it means. 

She’d killed Suit Man to protect Villanelle. To protect them. He’d underestimated her, and she’d proved him wrong. She’s stronger than she’s ever been, she thinks.

Could it be that she’d...evolved, beyond simply investigating? Was action the only next logical step?

“What are you thinking?” Villanelle asks her.

“I realised something today.”

Villanelle kisses her hair, only somewhat impatiently. “What.”

She lifts her head then, lets their gazes meet for what she says next. “I...I don’t think I’m done yet. With the Twelve. I think I have to finish what I started.”

Villanelle hums, her face giving nothing away. But something flickers in her eyes — just perceptible. “So I am not enough for you anymore.”

“No!” Eve blurts out, eyes going wide. “No, I don’t mean that at all.”

“You do,” Villanelle smiles, painfully.

It breaks Eve’s heart. She reaches up for Villanelle’s face, runs the backs of her fingers down her cheek. “I want to do this for _us_. That man today? It was Hélène who sent him. He was going to come after you, too.”

“There will always be men like him.”

“I don’t accept that! I won’t let our lives be dictated by them. Not when we’re finally together.” And then, with gentle fingers in her hair: “Not when we’re finally happy.”

Villanelle catches her hand at her head, entwines their fingers. “Are you? Happy?”

She sounds vulnerable. Like she had on the bridge that night.

Tears prick in Eve’s eyes, drive her to throw her leg over Villanelle’s body, straddling her hips. “I love you,” she promises down to her. “You’re all I want in the world, and I want-I _need_ you to be safe.”

“So you want to...what?” Villanelle asks, head tilted as she runs her hands up Eve’s arms, all the way to her shoulders and back down again. “Chase the Twelve down? Go on a killing spree?”

She’s not judging, Eve realises, is only asking. Eve ponders it. _Is_ that what she wants? 

She seeks answers in her lover’s neck, over her chest, in the very lines of her, but comes up empty in her perfection. “I...I don’t know,” Eve sighs out eventually. 

Villanelle is silent then, for a time that seems to stretch for hours, before she whispers into the dark. “I love you too, you know?”

Eve melts, relieved. “I know, baby.”

“So...okay.”

Eve narrows an eyebrow. “Okay?”

“You’re right,” Villanelle concedes, light leaking back into her eyes. “We can’t go on like this, with them—dictating everything. I don’t want that, for either of us.”

Villanelle kisses her then, and for a brief, terror-filled moment, Eve thinks that she’s about to get dumped. 

But Villanelle just smiles, rises to cup her cheeks. “Let’s _destroy_ these motherfuckers.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still @a_stankova on Twitter – come say hi! Also, ten bonus points to anyone who can guess where the idea for this came to me :)


End file.
